Q: You write, “More than a century and a half after its
founding, the Iowa State Fair is Iowa’s central institution, event, and
symbol.” How did the fair end up being so important to Iowa’s identity, and why
did you decide to write about it?

A: Even though most Iowans, like most Americans, are no
longer farmers, agriculture remains central to Iowa’s economy and culture. The
fair has always offered a celebration of agricultural bounty, and remains an
icon of Iowa’s productivity.

I chose to write about the Iowa State Fair for a combination
of personal and intellectual reasons. I grew up in Iowa and went to the fair
several times as a kid, so I had fond memories of it.

But I confess that, when I began researching the fair’s
history, I honestly had no idea how interesting it would prove to be, or that I
would write a book on it.

As a historian, it seemed to me that the Midwest has
received less attention than New England, the South, or the West, and I wanted
to help redress the neglect of Midwestern history.

I was also interested in the histories of both agriculture
and entertainment—an unlikely combination—and writing about the fair permitted
me to write about both of these topics, and to relate them to one another.

Q: What role did fairs play in the Midwest in the 19th
century, and in what ways has that changed or remained the same? What do you
see looking ahead?

A: American agricultural fairs were created principally to
teach farmers how to be more successful and more scientific. But fairs have
always mingled their “serious” purposes with fun.

These divergent sides of the fair sometimes generated
tension. The fair was an important annual event, and was considered a microcosm
of the state, so Iowans took it seriously, in the sense that they cared deeply
about what events were included in the fair or excluded from it.

Some Iowans insisted that the fair ought to be a sober
scientific exhibition. Others thought it ought to offer an annual vacation for
hard-working people.

Fairs today still offer both agricultural exhibits and
entertainments. The tension that swirled around entertainments from the
mid-19th century to the mid-20th century has subsided—entertainment of all
sorts is ubiquitous in America today, and the fair’s entertainments hardly seem
risqué or controversial by our standards.

Today I think that the fair seems reassuringly familiar.
Iowans attend the fair because they have a long history of doing so.

The Iowa State Fair remains extraordinarily popular. More
than one million people attended it in 2015. The fair remains a beloved event
and institution.

Iowans no longer need the fair to educate farmers—Iowa State
University, agricultural periodicals, and the internet can disseminate
information. And entertainment is now easily available even to farm families.

Still, the fair resembles an annual homecoming celebration
for Iowans. There is simply no other event or institution in the state that
embodies Iowa’s history and culture like the fair does.

Perhaps the virtual world of the internet will gradually
erode the popularity of the fair, but I am optimistic that the fair’s
popularity will endure. After all, it has endured throughout more than a
century and a half of almost unimaginable economic, political, and social
change.

Q: How did you research this book, and was there anything
that particularly surprised you?

A: The men who ran the fair wrote many letters, press releases, and annual
reports, and the fair was covered extensively in the press. I spent an entire
year in Iowa conducting this research.

When I began working on this book, I knew little about the
fair’s history, so many things surprised me! I recall being amused by the range
of the fair’s entertainments, from small sideshows to enormous grandstand
spectacles. Freak shows. Burlesque. Daredevils. Staged train wrecks. Disaster
spectacles.

The show business in the late 19th and early 20th century,
which depended on live performers, was very different from today’s popular
culture.

The fair also included other exhibits that were news to me.
It offered a wildly popular “scientific” baby judging contest in the early 20th
century, and was the place where Iowa artist Grant Wood, who painted “American
Gothic,” first attained fame. And, of course, the novel and movie “State Fair”
were set in Iowa.

Q: You write, “The growth of show business did not end the
debate over the relative place of agriculture and entertainment at the fair.”
How did that debate play out over the decades you studied?

A: The commercial show business became a big business in the
late 19th century, but commercial entertainments were not entirely welcomed
with open arms. Amusements provoked controversy across America, from big cities
to rural areas.

Many Americans worried that movies, dance halls, vaudeville
shows, and carnivals were tawdry, and were corrupting Americans’ morals and
undermining their work ethic.

These fears were sometimes pronounced among Iowans, who
fretted that entertainments embodied the values and behaviors of urban America,
and posed a threat to Iowa’s largely rural, agricultural society.

America became much more urbanized and industrialized in the
late 19th and early 20th century, and Iowans responded to these changes in
American society by debating what sort of exhibits and entertainments ought to
be offered at the Iowa State Fair.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Currently I am finishing a book on coin-operated machines in the early 20th
century.

Recently I have gotten very interested in the 1960s and
1970s, and I am at work on three articles about the counterculture: one on
intellectuals’ response to it, another on the racial minorities, and another on
countercultural magazines.

I have also been researching and writing about battles over
race relations and school integration in New Jersey, where I now live and
teach.

About Me

Author, THE PRESIDENT AND ME: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MAGIC HAT, new children's book (Schiffer, 2016). Co-author, with Marvin Kalb, of HAUNTING LEGACY: VIETNAM AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM FORD TO OBAMA (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).